This time-travelling ‘trick’ will brick your iPhone (don’t do it)

Curtis Moldrich Read more February 12, 2016

A YouTuber has just found the fastest way to brick your iPhone, and it involves going back in time. Those who have attempted to recreate the bug have found their iPhones totally bricked and in several cases the handset has had to be replaced entirely.

Although you shouldn’t do it in the first place, triggering the bug is actually quite simple. All you need to do is dive into Settings | General | Date and Time. Once you’re there, simply uncheck “Set Automatically” and set your iPhone’s date to the 1 January 1970. You’ll then find that after rebooting, your iPhone is unable to start.

According to 9to5Mac, the bug will affect any device using a 64-bit processor and running software later than iOS 8, so it has the potential to affect a huge amount of iPhones and iPads – if their owners decide to do it that is.

So far, there hasn’t been any comment from Apple about “the fault”, but it will be interesting to see how it reacts to something that’s entirely user-driven. As you’d expect, pranksters are also circulating the following image on Twitter.

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